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Monday, December 29, 2008

Today we have taken a pretty interesting lecture in the Software Engineering course about teamwork.

The lecture took the discussion form instead of only lecturing. So, that gave us as students the opportunity to speak out our minds about how to make a good team and what problems do we usually face. The instructor was so helpful and cooperative with us, and she seems to have a very good experience in the projects field, which I really admire about her.

Some of the problems discussed:-The Every-phase problem… meeting the deadlines!Although our teams consist of more than enough members, we usually cannot finish phases on time… Of course this problem is due to our same schedules since we are all students from the same level, so whenever there is a delay in the project for any reason ( Exams , other projects, etc.), this delay will be caused by all the members and cannot be solved!

-Work commitment problem. To solve this problem, the uncommitted member should submit her work as job releases so she can finish each release before deadline.

The instructor has asked the class some questions in order to make comparisons and observations; I took the opportunity and wrote down the percentages in order to make statistical information about different preferences in team working among my peers.*

The following are the statistics regarding forming the project team:How do you prefer team formation ?

-Almost all of the students preferred to pick their team members by themselves .-Except for only 1 student who preferred that the instructor (or anyone in charge) should assign random team members together. (Claiming that doing so would improve more skills and let her work in a more professional level) --- I totally do not agree!

How do you pick your team members?

-Most of the students (including me) prefer members with good teamwork skills, having common interests and good chemistry between team members, rather than team members with excellent skills only.

Ideal number of members in one team:Minimum : 3Maximum : 5

Students have stated that they prefer less number of team members in their team, and this number would vary relatively according to the size of the project.

That was all for a one-hour lecture. We really hope to see more lectures like this one , which deals with the course's material in a more realistic and interesting way.

________________________________________________Note: the sample space in my statistics is my class only (about 30 students), the instructor is planning to make statistics on the whole course students,which I'm really looking forward to check it out.